Today we’d like to introduce you to David Quady.
Hi David, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
Growing up, I was always what you’d call “creative,” but it took a while for my interest in visual art to really stand out. Things started to come into focus when I began taking art classes at a college near where I grew up in Nebraska, and there’s one story from that time that’s stuck with me ever since.
One day, in a fit of inspiration, I did this massive charcoal drawing, about 4 by 8 feet, on a piece of plywood I found leaning outside the studio arts building. It was a kind of surrealist dreamscape, pulled together from sketchbook drawings, imagination, and whatever else was floating around in my head at the time. It felt like a big leap for me, different and more ambitious, and I remember being really excited to show it to my drawing professor.
He looked at it for a while, nodded, and said something like, “Well, I think it’s great, you’ve definitely pushed yourself here. I only wonder what the sculpture department’s going to say about you taking their ramp for the basement door?”
I think about that moment a lot. It sums up something about how making art can be both revelatory and blinding at the same time and how it requires a constant intentional effort to maintain balance. That experience was a kind of ignition point for me. It set me on the path that led to the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, where I earned my BFA and, more recently, my MFA.
It’s been a long and not at all straight path from then to now. But in many ways, I feel like I’m just at the beginning.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
So far, I’d say that road has definitely had its share of character. It’s never really followed a straight trajectory. If nothing else, it’s rarely been boring.
There’s a particular challenge that comes with trying to build a creative life, taking something that feels deeply personal and meaningful, something that sustains you on almost a spiritual level, and figuring out how to make it coexist with the practical world of money, bills, and taxes. That’s been a constant balancing act.
I started college as an illustration and comics nerd, but I was restless. I kept trying on different mediums and styles, chasing something I couldn’t quite define, typical, angst-ridden, twenty-something artist stuff. The big shift came about ten years ago, when I found myself pulled back into oil painting. It just had everything I was looking for: a medium that rewards exploration and questioning through its material qualities.
That particular quality that exists with painting is something I haven’t found anywhere else. You can keep digging in, layering, scraping, and adjusting, and the surface starts to hold all those decisions in this incredibly rich, physical way. It can be a revelation.
At the end of the day, though, the real struggle is consistency. It’s about showing up every day, doing the work, and at the same time managing all the practical parts of being an artist. You have to learn how to shift between two very different headspaces: the artist and the businessperson. That balance is tough, but it’s also kind of the whole game.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
I suspect, like most artists, I’m probably the worst person to evaluate my own work with any kind of objectivity. It’s a strange irony how you can spend most of your time doing or thinking about something, and still feel least articulate when you try to describe it.
I tend to think of myself as a painter more than an artist, at least when I think in those terms at all. What draws me in is the illusionistic quality of painting, the magic trick of a flat surface suddenly taking on the depth, light, and atmosphere of the three-dimensional world. There’s something endlessly fascinating about that transformation.
The act of observing and interpreting has become most important. Whether I’m working on a landscape or a portrait, I’m trying to capture something of that fleeting experience of really seeing. That’s why working directly from life matters so much to me. When you spend hours revisiting the same location, watching the light shift, noticing the tiniest changes, something of the essence of that living moment makes its way into the painting.
It’s the same with portraiture. The longer you spend observing someone, the more you realize you’re not painting a static image of their face—you’re trying to convey something far more elusive than mere resemblance. It’s about presence, time, and all the little movements and impressions that make a person who they are.
Before we go, is there anything else you can share with us?
I love doing commissions and always enjoy collaborating with people to bring their ideas to life. Feel free to reach out through my website or my Instagram for more information!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.davidpquady.com
- Instagram: @davidpquady_art
